Oddity, the latest by writer/director Damian McCarthy, out now in theaters, offers a chill-inducing tale of supernatural revenge with one creepy mannequin at the center. One intense murder incites a feature-length trap of ghostly karma and justice.
The film stars Carolyn Bracken (You Are Not My Mother) as twin sisters Dani and Darcy. When Dani is brutally murdered at the remote country house that she’s renovating with her husband Ted (Gwilym Lee), the suspect dies soon after. But Darcy, a blind medium and oddity shop owner, arrives at Ted’s home a year later under the conviction that there’s more to Dani’s death than meets the eye, and she’s brought a creepy wooden mannequin with her to get meticulously crafted retribution.
Bloody Disgusting recently spoke with Damian McCarthy about his approach to horror and the importance of humor for the sake of entertainment. The humor is at its most apparent and whimsical in the film’s closing moments.
Warning: Plot spoilers ahead.
Darcy has a unique ability to see the truth, thanks to her psychic gift of touch. It’s through touch that she realizes that the orderly from Ted’s employment isn’t the only one responsible for her sister’s murder and prompts her to find the primary culprit. Armed with a Wooden Man, Darcy eventually uncovers the ultimate killer: Dani’s husband, Ted. But Ted springs his own trap to cover his tracks, with Darcy falling to her death.
Courtesy of Colm Hogan. An IFC Films and Shudder Release.
Darcy gets the last laugh from beyond the grave, sending Ted the same haunted bell that he noticed when visiting her oddity shop at the beginning of the film. A bell that comes attached with a vengeful bellboy’s spirit who kills whoever dares to ring it. Oddity’s closing moments see Ted ring the bell in amusement, unaware that the ghostly bellboy lurks behind him, waiting.
It’s a whimsical final punchline to Darcy’s elaborate scheme for justice.
While Ted’s fate was sealed, the ending did evolve from its initial concept. McCarthy originally planned to wrap Oddity on a much more chilling note in the form of a jump scare. But that serendipitously shifted during production.
McCarthy tells us of the ending, “It was always going to be the same, but the closing shot of the movie was going to be Gwylim standing up and turning, and he’s face to face with the bellboy. So, he’s going to be rising, and bang, he’s there. But we’ve seen that a lot where you end up on this scary face. During setups, Gwylim was sitting down, and the actor playing the bellboy, Shane Whisker, couldn’t see anything because of his contacts. He was just standing very still like this, and I went, ‘Oh, that actually looks really nice. That’s a really cool shot.‘ And the idea of using Little Willie Johns‘ ‘Now You Know,‘ using that song at the start was always there, but I said, ‘Oh, let’s get that. That’s way funnier.‘
“We obviously shot the other stuff where it ends in more of a horror closeup and this face, but this just seems just like a much better wide shot that just lets the audience – and I’ve seen it at SXSW when we watch with the audience- it gets a laugh, and it gets the imagination going. They’re like, ‘I wonder what’s going to happen to him once we hit the credits.‘ So yeah, the idea was always there; it just changed slightly. As you make these things, better ideas come to you, so that’s how it evolved.“
Courtesy of Colm Hogan. An IFC Films and Shudder Release.
That Darcy already warned that ringing the bell seals your inescapable doom, but the abrupt fade to black means viewers don’t see it happen. Considering that the Caveat bunny makes a brief appearance here, could that be an open thread to explore in a future film from McCarthy?
“I mean, we’ve talked about ourselves,“ McCarthy confesses. “Ted’s such a horrible smug character that for all we know, he became friends with the bellboy. But a girl did message me that she had seen it at SXSW, and she said she hated the character so much. She said, ‘I’d just like to hear that he does get killed, that that bellboy gets him killed.‘ I said, “Oh, yeah. Because Darcy does tell him, ‘Oh, be careful because everybody else that’s rang that bell has was found dead,‘ So it’s pretty obvious the next day Ted was probably found dead in this house, so rest assured justice has served him.”
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